Are Good-Looking People More Employable?
Ruffle and Shtudiner tested whether looks affect hiring by sending pairs of CVs to advertised job openings. In each pair one CV had no photograph and the other, nearly identical, carried a photograph of an attractive or a plain-looking man or woman. Attractive men were called back more often than men with no photograph or plain men, nearly twice as often as plain men. Attractive women gained nothing: women with no photograph were called back more often than either attractive or plain women. The authors examined several explanations for the penalty on attractive women and found evidence that jealousy and envy were the most likely cause.
Ruffle and Shtudiner tested whether looks affect hiring by sending pairs of CVs to advertised job openings. In each pair one CV had no photograph and the other, nearly identical, carried a photograph of an attractive or a plain-looking man or woman. Attractive men were called back more often than men with no photograph or plain men, nearly twice as often as plain men. Attractive women gained nothing: women with no photograph were called back more often than either attractive or plain women. The authors examined several explanations for the penalty on attractive women and found evidence that jealousy and envy were the most likely cause.
Written from the abstract read 2026-10-27 via OpenAlex.
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Ruffle, B. J., & Shtudiner, Z. (2015). Are good-looking people more employable? Management Science, 61(8), 1760-1776.